How tech baffled an elderly Congress • Hacker News Board

Re: How tech baffled an elderly Congress

#21

Post by lkbm » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #11

lkbm wrote: post #8

> We don’t yet have comprehensive age data for the next Congress Am I understanding this correctly? As of January 2[0], the day before the new session began, no one had yet compiled a full list of the ages of all members of Congress? That's baffling to me. Have an intern go look through the Wikipedia articles for each one of them. [0] There's no mention of the in the Baltimore Sun article, but https://www.washingtonp…

An age-based criterion for computer knowledge would write off Donald Knuth, while counting a tween that only knew snapchat as an expert. To be honest I'm not sure how useful the list of ages would be.

I've not proposed any sort of cutoff, and don't particularly care about the specific ages. I'm just astounded by the claim that data on the ages of members of Congress isn't readily available to a journalist at a major newspaper.

Re: How tech baffled an elderly Congress

#22

Post by k9s9 » Sat, Jan 05, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #9

rabidrat wrote: post #7

> Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., attempted to ask Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg a question about data privacy, and revealed a conception of social media resembling a wad of tangled Christmas lights: “Do you track devices that an individual who uses Facebook has that is connected to the device that they use for their Facebook connection, but not necessarily connected to Facebook?” This seems like a very legitimate…

> I often wonder what is the point of calling a corporate executive to DC anyway, since they have every reason to dissemble and no reason to cooperate in good faith Showboating, I've always assumed. A good deal of the questioning was clearly grandstanding, and a good number of the questions asked could have been answered by the Senators' grandchildren. That said, if you want to grandstand, you should first run your q…

Misguided way of looking at things imho. He is bringing more attention to the question and a larger non-technical audience now is aware.

I have known techies voicing issues and asking questions about Facebook practices wayback in 2008-9. You can say it took 10 years for the rest of the population to start asking the same questions. But I see it as a failure of the early warning technical crowd, who knew bad things were unfolding, to warn us faster.

Whats the lesson there?

Re: How tech baffled an elderly Congress

#23

Post by sulam » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 12:09 AM UTC

FiveSquared25 wrote: post #18

sulam wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you connect your Fitbit account to Facebook for the purpose of friend-finding, Facebook may keep track of your being a Fitbit user. However, Fitbit does not connect your device to Facebook. The possible exception to this is if you have a smart watch from Fitbit and a third party app establishes such a connection. Fitbit does not act as an intermediary here and so cannot keep your information private. (Disclosure —…

Excuse me for this curt reply, but do you have plans to support apps in the Fibit Blaze? Thanks!

I would never say never, but I don't know of any plans to do this and it would shock me if we did. Blaze has a different OS from Ionic/Versa.

Re: How tech baffled an elderly Congress

#24

Post by masonic » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 3:54 AM UTC

lkbm wrote: post #21

whatshisface wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An age-based criterion for computer knowledge would write off Donald Knuth, while counting a tween that only knew snapchat as an expert. To be honest I'm not sure how useful the list of ages would be.

I've not proposed any sort of cutoff, and don't particularly care about the specific ages. I'm just astounded by the claim that data on the ages of members of Congress isn't readily available to a journalist at a major newspaper.

Of course it's available, given that the birthdates all are. But, to paraphrase Barbie, "Math is hard."

I'm guessing that a quick Google of "116th Congress ages" didn't turn up a single preformatted source in the desired format in the first few links.

Re: How tech baffled an elderly Congress

#25

Post by FiveSquared25 » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC

sulam wrote: post #23

FiveSquared25 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me for this curt reply, but do you have plans to support apps in the Fibit Blaze? Thanks!

I would never say never, but I don't know of any plans to do this and it would shock me if we did. Blaze has a different OS from Ionic/Versa.

Thanks!

Re: How tech baffled an elderly Congress

#26

Post by lkbm » Sun, Jan 13, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

masonic wrote: post #24

lkbm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not proposed any sort of cutoff, and don't particularly care about the specific ages. I'm just astounded by the claim that data on the ages of members of Congress isn't readily available to a journalist at a major newspaper.

Of course it's available , given that the birthdates all are. But, to paraphrase Barbie, "Math is hard." I'm guessing that a quick Google of "116th Congress ages" didn't turn up a single preformatted source in the desired format in the first few links.

Having just spent a bit of time on this today[0], I realized there is one seat (NC district 9) that's still not set due to fraud allegations. Could be that's what they're referring to.

[0] Just threw this together to start playing with hosting using S3: http://howoldiscongress.com/ (Yes, I know that's absurd precision. wip and all.)